1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus for compressing a moving picture and to a method of controlling the operation of this apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Services for transmitting moving picture files to a mobile telephone are presently available, and mobile telephones come in a wide variety of models. Often the amount of data that can be received in a moving picture file, the format of a moving picture file that can be reproduced and the image display size differ for every model of mobile telephone. In order to so arrange it that a moving picture file can be reproduced by a mobile telephone, there is a technique that decides the amount of data that is to be transmitted in a moving picture file (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-298749), a technique for generating a plurality of items of moving picture data having different bit rates and transmitting the moving picture data that conforms to the band that is utilizable on the network (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-341488), a technique for transmitting moving picture data in a compressed format that is based upon a request from a user (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-232869), and a technique for generating moving picture data upon deciding moving picture generating parameters that conform to the model of a client terminal device by discriminating the model of the device (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-222124).
Since the amount of data in a moving picture file capable of being received by a mobile terminal such as a mobile telephone often is small, it is required that a moving picture file containing a comparatively large amount of data be partitioned in order to for it to be received. Depending upon the format of the moving picture file, however, there are instances where the file can only be partitioned at the location of a specific frame. This means there are occasions where a moving picture file cannot be simply partitioned in such a manner that large amount of data can be received by a terminal device.